Irish Eyes (Stolen Hearts Romance) (10 page)

Her eyes paused on the pin Cameron had given her with the instruction to wear it at all times. That man, she decided as she jerked her robe over the tracking device, had somehow started to wriggle his way into every aspect of her life. And she didn’t like it one bit.

Time to teach that big buttinski a lesson,
she thought. An instant before she lunged forward to nab the doorknob, she bent at the waist and shook her head furiously to ensure her hair looked properly wild and woolly.
She chomped down tight on her toothbrush, set her face in
a groggy scowl and yanked open the front door. “What is it?”

“That’s what I’m asking myself." Cameron reached out to push aside the mass of black hair curtaining her face. “What is it?”

She swatted his hand away. “It’s someone who has been disturbed far too early in the morning.”

“She speaks and the words fall like pearls from her rosy lips.” He placed one open hand over his heart.

She rolled her eyes at his attempt to tease her into a better mood.

“You certainly have a glow about you this morning, Miss Reed.” He stepped inside the house like an honest-to-goodness invited guest. “I can’t quite put my finger on what it is. You’re doing your hair differently, aren’t you?”

Julia let the front door fall shut with a window-rattling thud. She pulled the toothbrush from her mouth and folded her arms over her chest. As if taking up residence in her head and in her dreams had not been enough, now Cameron O’Dea was in her home. And no matter how much she didn’t like that, there didn’t seem to be much she could do about any of it.

That didn’t mean she had to accept it. No, when Julia didn’t like something she fought it, fought it with whatever was at her disposal. This morning, fresh out of bed, the tool of the moment was snarkiness. “Sorry if I’m not what you expected when you barged into my life but it’s a little bit early in the day for me to be apologizing for my looks, friend.”

“Oh?” He tipped his head to the right and smiled, revealing just the hint of a dimple. “At what time of day do you usually start apologizing for your looks?”

Apparently he’d missed the hint that she refused to be cajoled out of her sour mood. She eyed him from the top of his tousled hair to his gray wool sweater to the baggy wrinkles around the knees of his jeans. “Very clever remark coming from someone wearing the same outfit he had on yesterday”

“I say if a look works for a fellow, then go with it.” He adjusted his thick green parka over one shoulder. “It’s a fashion statement.”

“And it’s screaming ‘I sleep in my clothes.’” She shoved the toothbrush back into her mouth and began to scrub with vigor.
Gray sweater? Slept in his clothes? Same outfit?
If her morning became any more cartoonish than it already was, a great big lightbulb would appear over her head.

She pulled the toothbrush out again and used it to point at Cameron in accusation. “You did sleep in your clothes, didn’t you? Where were you? Parked in your car outside my house or some such nonsense?”

“Careful with that thing, it’s loaded!” Cameron whisked the back of his hand down his sweater to flick away the spray of tiny white bubbles that had been flung from her toothbrush.

“Give me a straight answer for once, Cameron, or I may just use that fine woolen sweater for a face towel.” She swiped the sleeve of her robe along one side of her mouth. “Did you or did you not spend the night on a stakeout outside my house?”

He placed his hands on his hips. “Well, someone has to look out for you.”

“I’ve managed to take care of myself just fine without the intervention of Interpol up till now, thank you.” She tucked her toothbrush in her robe pocket and gathered her thick hair back in one hand. “I venture to say I can bumble along a bit longer on my own.”

“Bumble being the operative word, I assume. ”

“If that’s supposed to make me laugh—”

“It’s supposed to make you
think.
" He tapped the side of his head trying to remind her of the importance of keeping sharp.

All Julia could see were those eyes. “Oh, I’m thinking all right. I’m a veritable frenzy of thought right now.”

She stumbled over the last two words as the deeper truth of what she had said sank in.

If Cameron caught her hesitation, he didn’t let it show as he stepped in close to her and all sense of joking around fell away. “In the past forty-eight hours, you’ve witnessed a kidnapping, unearthed a secret cache of stolen coins, agreed to work with an Interpol agent to solve a serious crime, and have been made to understand that all this may place you in physical danger. Yet this very morning comes a knock on your door and what do you do?”

She tossed her hair back, ready with a sassy comeback about how she’d known it was him because he
didn’t
knock. She would have known his pushy buzz anywhere. But the look on his face made her press her lips together.

“I’ll tell you what you did. Opened the door, pretty as you please. No peeking out to see what might be waiting, not even so much as a ‘Who is it?’ from Miss I-can-take-care-of-myself.” Though his voice stayed calm, anger burned red in the hollows of his cheeks.

Julia wondered what had fueled the reaction in him. A response to her foolhardiness in perhaps jeopardizing his plan? Or something more personal?
She wound her fingers into her robe’s lapels and clutched them over her throat. The rubber sole of her slipper scuffed over the hardwood floor when she spun around, placing her back to him, saying quietly, “I knew it was you at the door this morning.”

“How?” he challenged.

Was this where she admitted she only assumed it had been him—because she had been thinking of him? Julia shook her head, as if that would throw the notion clear of her mind and therefore keep it off her lips. She marched forward, her gaze sweeping the cozy – her landlord’s code word for teeny tiny—living room in her quaint –another code word, meaning grandmotherly -- cottage for something to distract her.

Cameron followed on her heels, heated persistence in his tone. “How? How did you know it was me outside your door this morning?”

“I—” She grabbed the hairbrush poking up from her purse on the coffee table and began to snag the bristles through her rumpled hair. “I just knew, okay?”

“No, it’s not okay.” He raised his voice in a way that said he was holding his ground not trying to grind her down.

She slashed the hairbrush through a nasty snarl and even though it hurt like heck, she didn’t make a sound. She would not give him the satisfaction of knowing how much he rattled her – in more ways than one. Fear and confusion welled up within her. Another yank of the brush brought a well of tears to her eyes.

Cameron used one hand to turn her toward him.

The brush suddenly felt as if it were made of lead. Her hand dropped to hang limply at her side. She blinked back the tears of pain and frustration that bathed her eyes.

“No. No tears. That is an absolute, unbreakable rule of mine.” He tossed his parka onto the couch and held his arms out to her.

Something dark and heavy against the gray of sweater caught her eye. Cameron was wearing a shoulder holster and gun!
A cold weight sank into the pit of her stomach and she shrank back.

His gaze followed hers to the menacing weapon strapped to his body. “Julia--”

“You’re really afraid for me, aren’t you?” she whispered, the words crackling in the back of her throat.

With one look she demanded more of him than his typical evasive answer.

“No, I’m not afraid for you. But I won’t take any chances. The Michael Shaughnessy I knew and loved would bring no harm to you.” His green eyes grew dark, his jaw taut. “But that’s not the man I spoke to on the phone yesterday.”

She nodded. Or did her whole rigid body simply sway under the staggering weight of this new information?

“I’m not afraid, Julia, I’m just being cautious.” He slipped the hairbrush from her hand and used it to sweep the dark tangles back from her face.

“Cautious,” she echoed, looking up at him as he moved around her, brushing her hair then bunching it into one large hand. When he stood behind her she cocked her head, forcing him to stop and step back a little. “Does this mean you plan to spend your nights camping in your car outside my house?”

“No.” He handed her the brush over her shoulder.

A quiet whoosh of air escaped her lips. “That’s a relief.”

“I happened to notice one of your neighbors has a caravan in his drive.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

“Caravan? You mean the RV?” She thought of that beast of a vehicle the man next door had pulled into the drive last summer and never used once that she knew of. Sometimes after a particularly rotten day she had imagined climbing into that thing herself and taking off for parts unknown.

“That’s the one.” He strode across the room to the large front window and pulled the sheer curtain back slightly. He peered out but kept back. No one outside would have been able to see him as he craned his neck and looked in one direction then the other. “I was thinking of asking to use it as a sort of base of operations.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” Julia blurted as much in frustration that Cameron might actually do what she had only dreamt of as in agitation that he would further encroach on her life like that.

“Why not?” He let the curtain fall shut again. “All of the really suave undercover agents have to ask for cooperation in stakeouts from time to time.”

She pounded across the floor to the window, reached out to yank the curtains open wide, then paused, the fabric wadded in both hands. “You really would. You’d really involve that kind-looking, older gentleman—”

“Mr. Wilson. Norman Wilson.”

“How did you know that?” She dropped the curtains and turned to face him, her stomach starting to knot.

“I know a great many things.” A quick wiggle of his eyebrows accentuated the twinkle in his green eyes. “All in the line of duty, of course.”

She wet her lips, almost afraid to ask. “What else do you know?”

“I know that my watching over you is only temporary” he assured her, his smile returning. “Just until my near brilliant plan roots out the greedy villain and the fair maiden is safe once more.”

“And what if this plan of yours fails to flush out your
greedy villain
?” She crossed her arms, feeling a bit more confident, a bit more like the good old in-charge Julia.

“Then, my sweet, we go to what we secret agent types like to call—” he leaned forward and gave her a knowing wink as he whispered, “—Plan B.”

*

“‘Plan B?’ He actually said ‘Plan B’?” Craig slammed shut the metal drawer of one of the ancient filing cabinets in the basement storeroom.

“A joke, Craig. It was a joke.” She stretched out her hand for the files he had pulled. At least, she thought it was a joke. “He just meant he has more than one contingency.”

“More than one contingency or more than one agenda?” Craig stopped to scoop up the last pile of dog-eared folders. “I don't get the man, Julia. What does he think he is going to do with all these applications? Half these people never even showed up to do what they said they would to begin with and the ones that did show up didn’t stick around.”

“Cameron swears he can ‘mine them for volunteer gold’. ” Julia pressed the folders against her chest and tried not to smile outright at the man’s claim as he lead the way from the dank storage room through the dimly lit hall. “It isn’t as if I haven’t gone through these files before. I’ve spoken with each and every one of these people time and time again, trying to persuade them to help out. Did that make one bit of difference?”

They wound their way to the steps, the musty odor of the lower floors practically weighing down the air around them.

Craig’s attitude was almost as sour. “And if asking for these weren’t enough, did you know he also asked for the shelter’s full financial report?”

“What can we do about that, Craig?” She wished she felt as relaxed as she sounded. “Our financial records are a matter of public record. He has as much right to review them as any citizen.”

“Yeah, but why?”

Why? Julia had asked herself that question many times since the man with the glimmer in his green eyes had walked through her door.
The man could just as easily pretend to stay busy around the shelter to serve his purpose. Instead, he chose to dig in and tackle two of her toughest problems—money and manpower.

She just couldn’t figure the Irishman out. Aside from his willingness to pitch in at the shelter, his treatment of her gave her pause. The man, who proclaimed without reservation that Shaughnessy would do his nephew no harm, nevertheless insisted she wear a tracking device. He had once said Shaughnessy would not come after her, yet he planned to stand guard over her personally.
Could the man be lying? Or, at the very least, not be revealing all he knew?

She shuddered, then immediately blamed it on the damp chill of the darkened corridor.

*

Julia and Craig carted the requested files up two flights of stairs. When they reached the barren but sun brightened office that Cameron had commandeered for his headquarters, she knocked at the open door with the heel of her shoe.